Which movies are really "surprise hits"?

[PhysicalMediaMaestro]

A lot of times you hear moviemakers/movie studios claim that a certain movie was a "surprise hit", meaning that they had no idea whatsoever that it would make so much money. When I hear those claims, I never believe them.

For example, Warner Brothers claimed that the 1996 movie "Space Jam" was a "surprise hit". My response was: Really? You cast the greatest basketball player to walk the face of the Earth (Michael Jordan) in the lead role, and you have him doing what he does best alongside the Looney Tunes characters at one of their peak points of popularity (the original Looney Tunes cartoons were often shown on Saturday mornings on ABC after other Saturday morning cartoons during the 1990s) and you're shocked that the movie made so much money? Why don't I believe you?

But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe some movies were so successful that everyone was genuinely shocked by how successful they were. If you know of any movies that really were surprise hits, I would love to hear your stories. Have a nice day and a great weekend.

[sanriel]

Joker. I don't think anyone expected such a revenue and hit, let alone an Oscar. Separately, the second film is also something that hardly anyone expected, but in the exact opposite sense. Two anomalies.

[PhysicalMediaMaestro]

Originally Posted by sanriel

Joker. I don't think anyone expected such a revenue and hit, let alone an Oscar. Separately, the second film is also something that hardly anyone expected, but in the exact opposite sense. Two anomalies.

Too many studios make sequels out of movies that they did not expect to perform well because they get overconfident and cocky.

[milo bloom]

Originally Posted by PhysicalMediaMaestro

If George Lucas didn't even bother to stick around for opening weekend, he must have sincerely thought the first "Star Wars" movie would fail. Thank you for sharing that information with me.

Even after that first weekend, George still wasn't convinced. His response was something like "all scifi does well the first weekend, we'll wait and see if it has staying power" so he really was not expecting it to get as big as it did.


For me, there's many animated films that the studio wasn't expecting to do much:

Disney thought Pocahontas was going to be their big hit during production, not expecting the previous year's The Lion King to be the hit that it was.


During production of Dreamworks Shrek and Prince of Egypt, workers who weren't doing enough were "punished" by being sent to the Shrek team, as they considered PoE to be the premier title.


And then Disney's The Emperor's New Groove was fraught with production delays and story changes (it was originally a serious take on The Prince and the Pauper set in Aztec culture, you can see a few of those roots in the finished product).

It's box office wasn't massive, but once it hit home video (in 2000, as DVD was becoming huge) its following became huge.

[PhysicalMediaMaestro]

Originally Posted by milo bloom

During production of Dreamworks Shrek and Prince of Egypt, workers who weren't doing enough were "punished" by being sent to the Shrek team, as they considered PoE to be the premier title.

That happened to enough people at Dreamworks that they called it "getting Shreked". I wonder if some of them underperformed on purpose because they liked 3D computer animation better than 2D traditional animation. When "Shrek" turned out to be a much bigger hit than "The Prince of Egypt", they probably saw it as a reward in the end.

[Zivouhr]

Napoleon Dynamite was a big surprise hit in theaters. It even got some skits at awards shows. Then the same director, Jared Hess I think, released another big hit that I didn't think was going to be a hit, with his Napoleon Dynamite style version of Minecraft The Movie.

Who would've guessed they would be able to make a Minecraft movie work with that dry humor template? It was a big hit though. There was hardly any talk about it in the forum here until after it hit theaters.

[Leslie Dame]

Classic example: My Big Fat Greek Wedding

[steel_breeze]

I think the first Star Wars was the ultimate surprise hit. Lucas thought it would be such a bomb he famously traveled to Hawaii with his pal Spielberg on opening weekend. Spielberg knew better.

I would say Titanic was another. Biggest budget (up to that time) in film history; everyone thought it would be the biggest disaster since... well... the Titanic!

Casablanca is a cool example, too: everyone on it thought they were just making a boilerplate studio movie; one of a dozen the studio was putting out that year. No one had any idea they were making one of the greatest movies of all time.

[filmbuffTX]

Home Alone - Famously WB shut down the production because it was running over budget and they didn't have much confidence in it. The movie quickly moved to FOX and upon release it became an overnight sensation and one of the most iconic holiday films of all time.

The Blair Witch Project - It had a very (for its time) unique premise and the marketing was clever. Even so there's no way Artisan (Lionsgate) thought it would make a quarter of a billion dollars at the box office.

[PhysicalMediaMaestro]

Originally Posted by filmbuffTX

Home Alone - Famously WB shut down the production because it was running over budget and they didn't have much confidence in it. The movie quickly moved to FOX and upon release it became an overnight sensation and one of the most iconic holiday films of all time.

So "Home Alone" was initially a Warner Brothers movie, and then Warner Brothers sold it to FOX? I never knew that.

That's not the first time a movie studio sold a movie that was partway through production to another studio. The 1983 film "WarGames" started off as a Universal Studios movie before they sold it to MGM.

https://fictionmachine.com/2016/05/1...wargames-1983/

Also, the 1991 film "The Addams Family" started off as an Orion movie before the cash-strapped Orion decided to sell it to Paramount Pictures. Here's an early trailer that was made beginning with the Orion Pictures Corporation logo:

The Addams Family: Orion Pictures Advanced Teaser (late 1990) - YouTube

[PhysicalMediaMaestro]

Originally Posted by steel_breeze

I think the first Star Wars was the ultimate surprise hit. Lucas thought it would be such a bomb he famously traveled to Hawaii with his pal Spielberg on opening weekend.

If George Lucas didn't even bother to stick around for opening weekend, he must have sincerely thought the first "Star Wars" movie would fail. Thank you for sharing that information with me.

[PhysicalMediaMaestro]

Originally Posted by steel_breeze

I would say Titanic was another. Biggest budget (up to that time) in film history; everyone thought it would be the biggest disaster since... well... the Titanic!.

They had good reason to be concerned. A lot of big-budget movies have been flopping lately. The 2025 Disney movie "Snow White" had a budget of $209,000,000 and we all know how bad that movie did.....

[PhysicalMediaMaestro]

Originally Posted by Leslie Dame

Classic example: My Big Fat Greek Wedding

In that instance, the studio's lack of confidence in the film was sincere. It only opened on 108 screens and made just $600,000 in its first weekend. But word of mouth did more to promote the film than studio-sanctioned marketing. When the film's release expanded to 2,000 screens, it ended up earning a grand total of $368,700,000. It only cost $5,000,000 to make, so it made 73 times as much money as it cost to produce.

https://www.pluggedin.com/movie-revi...tgreekwedding/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Big_Fat_Greek_Wedding

[An4h0ny]

The Crying Game

[GoneJoel]

Smile (2022) was first planned as a streaming release but hit theaters after positive test screenings. It opened with $22.6 million and held strong, dropping only 18% in its second weekend—one of the smallest drops for a modern horror film. In the end, it made $217.4 million on a $17 million budget.

[PhysicalMediaMaestro]

Originally Posted by GoneJoel

Smile (2022) was first planned as a streaming release but hit theaters after positive test screenings. It opened with $22.6 million and held strong, dropping only 18% in its second weekend—one of the smallest drops for a modern horror film. In the end, it made $217.4 million on a $17 million budget.

Deciding to release the movie in theaters when it performed better than expected on streaming was a smart move on their part.

[Jay H.]

Ghost. Absolutely nobody expected that movie to be even modestly successful. It was released the same Summer as many high-profile movies that were heavily advertised and it outgrossed them all. I was a projectionist when it was released July 13th 1990; the last day we had it was December 24th of that year.

The budget was $22 million, and it made $505 million worldwide. It was nominated for five Academy Awards, and won two.

[PhysicalMediaMaestro]

Originally Posted by Jay H.

Ghost. Absolutely nobody expected that movie to be even modestly successful. It was released the same Summer as many high-profile movies that were heavily advertised and it outgrossed them all. I was a projectionist when it was released July 13th 1990; the last day we had it was December 24th of that year.

The budget was $22 million, and it made $505 million worldwide. It was nominated for five Academy Awards, and won two.

That means that word-of-mouth succeeded where studio-sanctioned advertising (or lack thereof) failed. When ordinary people recommend movies to their friends and family, they have a better chance of succeeding because they know their friends and family on a deeper, more intimate level than any market researcher ever could.

"Ghost" was a great film that succeeded in blending more than two genres (romance, thriller, comedy and mystery) together, and its Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay was a well-deserved one. It is also one of the few movies that has made me cry. I'm glad you got to see it in the theater.

[DKLou]

Godzilla Minus One

[Star Lord]

Lucy(2014). Never gets talked about how that film made $458M WW. No IP, no superhero just ScarJo!